Read the reasoning
behind the opportunity.

The development of my models.

How my approach to business strategy developed into an investment framework

I developed STRELM^™ to help businesses decide where to focus their commercial effort. The Finanze Framework^™ emerged later from my work in property strategy and finance. Both examine connected decisions, but they answer different questions: where should a business focus, and does an investment work for the investor?

A team might need more clients. Another might have plenty of relationships but be doing too little with them. A third might have a strong proposition that the market did not properly understand. Giving all three the same instruction to “grow the business” would leave the most important question unanswered. What, specifically, needed to change?

That problem led me to develop STRELM^™, the Strategic Relationship Management Model. Years later, my work in property strategy and finance brought me to another question: what has to work together for an investment to succeed?

The connection between those questions explains much of the thinking behind The Finanze Framework^™. It also explains why I believe its usefulness extends beyond property.

The foundations at Aston.

My education in Management and Strategy at Aston University gave me a foundation for examining how businesses operate and how their decisions fit together. My subsequent career, consultancy work and entrepreneurial activities gave me opportunities to apply and question that thinking.

I became interested in models that could help people decide what to do. A useful framework needs enough structure to clarify a problem, while leaving room for the circumstances of the business using it.

STRELM grew out of initiatives I developed or led at Société Générale and Standard Chartered. I subsequently applied it through work involving Trans Global Partners, KIMA and Hawk. It became the intended subject of a thesis during MBA studies that I did not complete. The model nevertheless continued to influence how I approached business development.

The commercial problem behind STRELM.

STRELM organised commercial activity into four areas.

Presentation concerned how the business appeared to its market: its identity, proposition, website, materials and the way it communicated what it could offer.

Origination concerned developing new customer relationships. In the current formalisation, additional business within an existing relationship is classified as Penetration.

Coverage concerned looking after existing relationships, keeping customers satisfied and maintaining effective account management.

Penetration concerned developing those relationships further, including relevant cross-selling and increasing the proportion of a client’s requirements that the business could serve.

Each activity mattered. The managerial question was which deserved particular attention in a given team, desk, business line or country.

Consider a business with a credible service and satisfied customers but very few new enquiries. Its immediate priority might be Presentation or Origination. A business attracting plenty of customers while struggling to look after them would face a different problem. More selling could put further pressure on an already stretched service.

These examples illustrate the model’s purpose. A commercial objective becomes more useful when it identifies the activity that needs attention and explains why.

Making different priorities visible.

The visual application was deliberately simple. I used a four-part box and highlighted the corner representing the priority for a particular business unit. Those boxes could be placed on maps, making it possible to see where different teams or countries needed to concentrate their effort.

One location might need to strengthen its market presence. Another might need to improve existing relationships. A third might have an opportunity to serve more of its clients’ needs.

The same visual language could represent those differences. That was central to the model: a common approach to discussing priorities did not require every business unit to have the same priority.

The original representation also used Cost and Value Add axes. In formalising the model now, it is important to recognise that the actual economics depend on the business. Improving account management can sometimes create more value than a new sales campaign. The diagram should prompt investigation, with evidence determining the decision.

Applying that thinking at Finanze.

STRELM remains an implicit influence on how I think about Finanze Group. Communicating each business’s role, developing suitable relationships, looking after clients and understanding their wider requirements all belong within that earlier way of organising commercial attention.

Over the last five years, direct experience in property strategy and finance has required a more specific framework for the investment itself.

A property can appear attractive because of its price, rental income or potential value after improvement. But the investor still needs to establish how the transaction will work. The ownership structure must permit the plan. Cash must be available when payments fall due. The work must be deliverable, and the proposed exit must support the intended outcome.

For example, a lender may release a works advance after an inspection, while a contractor needs paying before that inspection takes place. Both arrangements may look reasonable separately. Together, they create a cash requirement that somebody must fund.

A refinancing exit raises another question. Repaying the original lender does not necessarily return all of the investor’s capital. If substantial equity remains committed, that affects the investor’s capacity to take on the next project.

These relationships are the substance of The Finanze Framework. They explain why an investment needs to be assessed as a connected set of decisions.

From commercial attention to investment judgement.

STRELM asks where a business should focus its commercial effort. TFF asks whether a particular investor can achieve an intended outcome through a particular transaction.

The continuity lies in examining how the parts affect one another. A strong sales initiative depends on the business being able to serve the clients it wins. A promising investment depends on the investor being able to fund and deliver the steps that create its value.

TFF brings that investment assessment together through Strategy, Property and Finance. Strategy starts with the investor’s objectives, resources and capacity to carry risk. Property examines the asset, its market and the basis for its value. Finance examines the usable funds, costs, obligations and timing required to complete the plan.

Protection and continuity run through those decisions. Ownership rights, personal exposure and the ability to act when circumstances change can affect the transaction from the outset.

In the accompanying paper, I formalise this approach into eight connected tests covering investor fit, asset evidence, value creation, ownership, liquidity, execution, exit and protection. This provides a structure for TFF: Deal Analysis and a way to make the reasoning behind an investment assessment visible.

The conclusion may be to investigate further, change the structure, renegotiate the price, wait or walk away. A framework earns its place when it helps someone reach a better-supported decision, including a decision not to proceed.

Why the application can extend beyond property.

Property provides a clear setting for these questions because the asset, funding, delivery work and exit are often identifiable. Similar relationships arise elsewhere.

Someone acquiring a business must consider the purchase price alongside working capital, customer retention, management capability and debt repayments. An investment in equipment depends on demand, installation, operating costs and the time required before it generates cash.

The evidence and specialist knowledge will differ. The underlying questions about purpose, resources, timing and recovery of capital remain relevant.

That is the wider application I want to explore. TFF provides a proposed structure for investigating those relationships. Its usefulness in each setting needs to be assessed against the decisions investors actually face.

Putting the models into writing.

Formalising these models has also meant examining how they relate to established management thinking.

Herzberg offers a useful comparison when considering the difference between conditions that prevent problems and factors that create additional value. Maslow prompts questions about dependencies and foundations. Porter directs attention to the competitive environment within which a business or investment operates.

Each comparison has limits. The accompanying papers explain those limits and examine other literature more directly concerned with decision-making, relationships and investment. They set out what the models propose, where they might be useful and how their effects could be tested.

For me, publishing this work records the development of an approach that began in management education, evolved through practical business experience and has become more specific through my work at Finanze.

STRELM gave me a way to ask where commercial effort should go. The Finanze Framework gives me a way to examine whether the decisions within an investment support the result the investor wants. Putting both into writing makes that thinking available for others to use, question and develop through experience.

Questions about the two models.

What is the difference between STRELM and TFF?

STRELM helps a business allocate commercial attention across its relationships and organisational units. TFF examines whether the strategy, asset, funding and delivery arrangements of an investment support the investor’s intended outcome. One does not replace the other.

Who developed STRELM and The Finanze Framework?

I developed both models through my management education, professional experience, consultancy and entrepreneurial work. The accompanying STRELM paper sets out the documentary history and distinguishes the original formulation from the analytical extensions made in 2026.

Where can I read the full papers?

The two companion papers below explain the models, their academic foundations, practical applications and proposed research. They are conceptual working papers, available for readers to examine, question and apply with appropriate judgement.

Further reading.

The Finanze Framework as an investment decision model

The full conceptual paper sets out the eight decision tests, academic foundations, worked property example and proposed applications beyond property.

STRELM and the allocation of commercial attention

The expanded companion paper documents the model’s history, defines the four activities and sets out practical applications, eight testable propositions and a programme for evaluating its effects.

Both are conceptual working papers by Alastair Hoyne. They document the models and their proposed applications; they have not undergone independent peer review or empirical validation.

Related reading.

Download the STRELM paper · Download the TFF paper

The model in brief.

STRELM^™ is the Strategic Relationship Management Model developed by Alastair Hoyne. It helps a business decide where to focus commercial attention across Presentation, Origination, Coverage and Penetration, according to the needs of a team, desk, business line or country.

Download the full working paper (PDF)

Key questions.

What are the four activities in STRELM?

Presentation explains the proposition. Origination develops new customer relationships. Coverage maintains and services existing relationships. Penetration develops appropriate additional business within those relationships.

How is STRELM used in a business?

Define the business unit and objective, examine evidence across the four activities, compare possible interventions, assign an owner and resources, and review the result. A highlighted quadrant communicates the priority; the supporting decision record explains it.

Is STRELM an empirically validated model?

The paper documents the model’s development and provides a theoretical account, practical applications and testable propositions. It does not report independent empirical validation or claim proven performance improvements.

Read the full paper.

A practitioner developed framework for strategic relationship management

Conceptual academic working paper | Version 2.0 | 7 October 2026

Abstract.

Organisations must allocate limited managerial attention among explaining their proposition, acquiring relationships, serving existing customers and developing further business within those relationships. These activities are interdependent, but their relative importance varies across organisational units and over time. This paper formalises STRELM^™, the Strategic Relationship Management Model developed by Alastair Hoyne, as a framework for diagnosing and communicating such priorities. It combines a bounded documentary history with an integrative conceptual analysis of strategic customer relationship management, relationship marketing, organisational attention, capabilities and performance measurement. The author-held archive contains a four-part formulation dated June 2014, explicit STRELM naming and attribution in a plan labelled April 2015, and subsequent adaptations. The paper distinguishes those historical elements from the analytical extensions proposed here. Its central argument is that STRELM may improve commercial decisions when a shared activity vocabulary is combined with local evidence, explicit dependencies, resource commitments and review. The four activities are Presentation, Origination, Coverage and Penetration. They constitute a diagnostic vocabulary, rather than a universal ranking of economic returns or a mandatory sequence of relationship development. Eight propositions specify potential benefits, moderators and failure conditions. An implementation protocol, hypothetical worked applications and a prospective evaluation programme make the model usable and contestable. The contribution is an articulated framework connecting commercial diagnosis with the distribution of attention and accountable execution. Historical attribution and practitioner experience support its development narrative; they do not establish causal effectiveness. Independent empirical evaluation remains necessary.

Keywords: STRELM; strategic relationship management; managerial attention; commercial strategy; customer relationship management; relationship development; strategy implementation.

1 Introduction.

A commercial organisation can increase activity without addressing the problem that constrains its progress. More enquiries may overwhelm an unreliable delivery process. A new website may clarify an offer that the intended customer cannot afford. A relationship team may protect existing business while overlooking suitable additional needs. Conversely, a capable organisation may have neither sufficient market recognition nor a reliable source of new relationships. Each situation can produce disappointing revenue, yet the appropriate interventions differ.

The management problem is therefore more specific than whether to invest in sales or marketing. It concerns the allocation of the next increment of commercial attention: which activity requires attention, within which unit, for what reason, and with what consequence for the rest of the business? A group-wide instruction to increase sales can obscure local differences. Equally, unrestricted local discretion can make it difficult to compare proposals or coordinate shared resources. Managers require both a common vocabulary and a means of preserving contextual judgement.

STRELM was developed in response to this practical problem. Its four activities are Presentation, Origination, Coverage and Penetration. Presentation concerns how a business explains and substantiates its proposition. Origination concerns developing suitable new customer relationships. Coverage concerns maintaining and servicing existing relationships. Penetration concerns relevant expansion within those relationships. The original visual application placed a four-part symbol on a map and highlighted the area requiring attention for a country, desk or business line. The purpose was to make differences in commercial priorities visible across an organisation.

This paper develops the model beyond that initial visual device. Its research question is: under what conditions might a shared four-activity diagnosis improve the allocation and execution of commercial attention across heterogeneous organisational units? The proposed answer centres on a chain of reasoning. Explicit categories can help managers surface competing interpretations of a problem. Local evidence can connect a category to a plausible constraint. A comparative decision can translate that diagnosis into a resource commitment. Named ownership and review can then make the intervention accountable and revisable. Each link can fail, and the paper specifies those possible failures.

The theoretical contribution sought is deliberately bounded. Relationship acquisition, service, account development and communication are established activities. Their inclusion in a diagram does not establish a new general theory of strategy. STRELM’s proposed contribution lies in their combination as a contextual decision routine connecting unit-level diagnosis, organisational visibility and execution. This claim invites comparison with simpler planning routines and existing customer management approaches. A model that cannot outperform an equally disciplined unbranded process may still have pedagogic value, but should not claim a distinctive performance effect.

The paper addresses academic and practitioner audiences through the same analytical structure. For scholars, it defines constructs, mechanisms, boundary conditions and propositions. For management practitioners and strategic consultants, it explains how to diagnose a commercial problem, challenge an initial interpretation, compare interventions and document the resulting decision. The practical protocol is a proposed application of the model, not an empirically calibrated scoring instrument.

The argument proceeds through research design and provenance, theoretical positioning, specification of the model, mechanisms, implementation, illustrations, propositions and an evaluation programme. It closes by explaining the relationship between STRELM and The Finanze Framework^™, a later model focused on investment decisions. Their shared concern with coordinated judgement does not make them interchangeable.

2 Research design and evidential approach.

2.1 A conceptual model paper informed by practice

The paper adopts a conceptual model-development approach, informed by practitioner experience and historical documents. Jaakkola (2020) distinguishes several designs for conceptual research and emphasises making the selection and analytical role of theories explicit. Here, strategic CRM and relationship marketing define the substantive domain, while organisational attention supplies the principal explanatory lens. Capabilities and learning perspectives help identify conditions under which a change in attention could translate into action. Comparisons with familiar management models establish boundaries rather than provide validation by analogy.

The analytical sequence is to reconstruct the historical formulation; define its categories and decision object; compare it with adjacent literature; propose mechanisms and limiting conditions; and derive propositions that can be contradicted by evidence. Whetten’s (1989) distinction between the elements of an explanation, their relationships, underlying reasoning and contextual limits informs this structure. The result is a theoretically informed framework and research agenda. No interviews, experiments, customer surveys or field outcome analyses were conducted for this paper.

2.2 Documentary evidence

The historical account draws on the documentary review completed for version 1.1: twelve author-supplied PDFs and one native PowerPoint presentation. That review inspected visible dates, relevant text and diagrams, and embedded document properties. Seven sources directly inform the account and are cited as D1 to D7. The other six provide context but are not counted as confirmed implementations. A private register retains filenames, page locations, metadata, copy identifiers and evidential qualifications. Confidential client and commercial details are excluded from this paper.

The archive is author-selected. It is not a representative sample of consulting engagements, an independently authenticated historical collection or a sample designed to estimate effectiveness. The method separates four questions: whether an idea is expressed in a document; whether its use is proposed; whether a change in practice is reported or corroborated; and whether an outcome can be attributed to the intervention. Agreement between a cover date and file properties strengthens internal consistency but does not provide independent timestamp authentication. A hash generated during the review identifies the inspected copy, not its historical date of creation.

2.3 Literature selection and analytical discipline

The literature review is purposive and integrative, with searches and source checks conducted through 7 October 2026. Searches used the model’s name and terms concerning strategic relationship management, strategic CRM, relationship marketing, managerial attention, key account management, market capabilities, exploration and exploitation, conceptual research and customer profitability. Selection favoured original scholarly works, publisher records, author-associated university repositories and relevant review articles. Maslow, Herzberg and Porter were included as contrasting lenses familiar to management practice.

The review does not claim systematic coverage, a bibliometric census or a conclusive prior-art search. Full texts were used where accessible; for some works the accessible evidence comprised abstracts, publisher summaries or author-hosted records. Claims about those works are restricted accordingly. Appendix C identifies the principal access levels and the role of each source group. The theoretical positioning is retrospective; it does not imply that the historical model was consciously derived from every theory discussed here.

The analysis follows a further separation: published research supports statements about its own constructs or findings; the archive supports the model’s documentary history; and the mechanisms proposed for STRELM are this paper’s analytical contribution. Evidence that relationship marketing can be effective does not establish that STRELM is effective. Likewise, a surviving consulting proposal supports a claim about proposed application, not a claim that a client achieved the projected benefit.

3 Development and documentary history.

3.1 Practitioner origins

I developed STRELM through banking, consultancy and entrepreneurial work. My account of its origins includes initiatives I developed or led at Société Générale and Standard Chartered, followed by applications in work involving KIMA, Trans Global Partners and Hawk. My studies in Management and Strategy at Aston University formed part of the educational background to this work. I subsequently intended to study the model in an MBA thesis, although I did not complete the MBA.

The recurring practical challenge was how to decide where different parts of a business should focus. A team with a sound proposition but insufficient relationships required a different intervention from one with established relationships and poor service coordination. The original map-based display was intended to make those differences intelligible. Its purpose was not to classify countries as permanently good or bad, but to identify a current commercial emphasis for a defined business within each location.

3.2 The surviving documentary sequence

D1 is a business development plan labelled January 2014. Pages 22 to 24 connect branding, origination, coverage and penetration with customer segments and a six-stage process: Brand, Identify, Introduce, Assess, Close and Coverage. Its surviving PDF records creation in December 2014. It therefore supplies a functional antecedent, while the later export limits what can be inferred about January creation. Its customer-segment pillars identify groups to serve; they are not the four activities of STRELM.

D2, visibly dated 10 June 2014, contains the four-part Cost and Value Add matrix and describes it as self-developed (p. 5). Its recorded PDF dates also fall on 10 June 2014. The next page permits attention to several areas where resources allow. This is the earliest explicitly dated complete quadrant located in the reviewed archive. The defensible historical claim is that a formulation is documented in this dated presentation, rather than that the exact date of invention or public disclosure has been independently proved.

D3, a plan labelled April 2015, names STRELM, expands it as Strategic Relationship Management, displays the matrix and attributes it to Alastair Hoyne (p. 2). Its PDF creation property records 28 March 2015. That sequence is compatible with preparation for the stated plan month. The corporate copyright footer is not used to establish the model’s origin date. Nor is a correspondence between corporate names inferred solely from similarity to names recalled in the practitioner account.

D4 reproduces trade-press reports dated January and February 2014 about changes in sales, marketing and relationship coverage. These reports supply context for organisational change beyond a proposal alone. However, the inspected copy is an author-held compilation, publisher originals were not independently verified in the underlying review, and the articles do not name or test STRELM. Statements attributed to me also remain statements by the practitioner rather than independent measurement of performance.

D5 and D6, both labelled September 2017, repeat customer-segment coverage and the six-stage workflow. One survives as a 2021 PDF export. These documents support continuity and adaptation of the operating approach, not independent replications of a performance effect. D7 is a native consultancy presentation with March 2019 properties. It uses the same quadrant under a consultancy business-development label and applies the activities to a software business. Another contributor is recorded as its creator and last modifier. That record supports collaborative adaptation; it does not establish authorship of every slide or implementation of the proposal.

3.3 What the archive establishes

Taken together, the documents strengthen the attribution and development narrative: an operating antecedent, a complete 2014 formulation, named 2015 attribution and later adaptations are present. They also show that the model was associated with questions of segmentation, ownership, workflow and product feedback. They do not establish causal results, every recalled implementation, comprehensive novelty or unrestricted rights in original corporate materials.

The historical core comprises the four activities, the Cost and Value Add arrangement and contextual focus. The formal definitions, causal reasoning, measurement conventions, comparative decision protocol and prospective research programme in this paper are 2026 extensions. Keeping that distinction visible prevents present-day analytical precision from being projected backwards into documents that did not contain it.

4 Position within management and strategy research.

4.1 Strategic customer relationship management

Payne and Frow (2005) position CRM as a strategic, cross-functional process. Their framework integrates strategy development, value creation, multichannel integration, information management and performance assessment. This is a close neighbour to STRELM because it treats customer management as an organisational issue rather than simply a software installation. STRELM addresses a narrower decision: where a particular unit should concentrate additional commercial effort within that wider system.

Reinartz, Krafft and Hoyer (2004) conceptualise and measure CRM through initiation, maintenance and termination. Their cross-sectional studies report a moderately positive association between CRM processes and company performance. The explicit inclusion of termination is particularly useful here: a model that only encourages acquiring and expanding relationships risks treating continuation as inherently desirable. STRELM therefore requires a feasible option to decline, reduce, redesign or end a relationship. This is a decision permitted across the four activities, not a fifth quadrant presented as historical doctrine.

The distinction between a relationship process and an attention decision matters. CRM describes how relationships can be managed over time. STRELM can organise a review of which part of that work currently deserves managerial intervention. It should work with CRM information and customer processes; it is not an alternative to keeping accurate records, designing suitable services or understanding customer economics.

4.2 Relationship quality and customer economics

Morgan and Hunt (1994) theorise commitment and trust as mediating variables in relationship marketing and test that account in a study of tyre retailers. Their work supports treating relationship quality as a substantive construct, rather than assuming that repeated contact necessarily creates trust. For STRELM, the implication is to examine whether a proposed expansion depends on a relationship condition that is actually present. This is an application proposed here, not a finding of their study about STRELM.

Palmatier et al. (2006) synthesise empirical research on relationship marketing and identify contextual variation in its effectiveness. Their findings indicate stronger effects in settings where relationships matter more to customers, including business and service contexts. This helps delimit a plausible domain for STRELM: relationship-intensive businesses may provide a more favourable setting than anonymous, infrequent transactions. It also cautions against assuming that a uniform relationship initiative will produce uniform results.

Reinartz and Kumar (2000) examine customer longevity and profitability in a noncontractual setting, including propositions about servicing costs and profits over time. The managerial implication drawn here is to test the economics of retained and expanded relationships rather than using tenure as a value proxy. The existence of a long relationship does not, by itself, answer whether an additional service or further investment in that account is worthwhile.

These perspectives make customer benefit and economic contribution complementary considerations. An additional sale can raise revenue while worsening delivery, concentration or service costs. A decision to resolve an issue or decline an unsuitable extension can preserve the relationship without producing an immediate transaction. STRELM needs to recognise those outcomes if it is to support strategy rather than simply repackage sales targets.

4.3 Organisational attention as the principal explanatory lens

Ocasio (1997) explains firm behaviour through how organisations channel and distribute decision-makers’ attention. Attention concerns which issues and responses are noticed and pursued; it is shaped by the situations and organisational structures in which decisions occur. This is the closest theoretical foundation for STRELM’s focus on the allocation of commercial effort. The relevant question is not merely whether managers know that an activity exists, but whether their meetings, measures and responsibilities lead them to act upon it.

Ocasio, Laamanen and Vaara (2018) extend the attention-based view by examining communication as part of how organisational attention is shaped. Their analysis foregrounds vocabularies and communication practices. A STRELM display can accordingly be studied as an intervention in management conversation. Its potential effect would arise through what participants discuss and decide, not through the presence of a quadrant on a slide.

Brielmaier and Friesl (2023) review the attention-based literature and develop situated attention as a research direction. Their account examines materiality, social dynamics, temporality and the framing of the strategic setting. For the present paper, this motivates attention to the review meeting itself: who supplies evidence, who can challenge a priority, how long the decision remains valid and whether the display excludes an important issue. Those questions identify observable features of a STRELM implementation.

The proposed contribution to this conversation is a specified commercial decision routine whose components can be manipulated and evaluated. STRELM does not replace the attention-based view or establish a new general explanation of organisational behaviour. It offers a practical setting in which to investigate how a compact vocabulary, unit-specific evidence and visible commitments might change the distribution of attention. Its success depends partly on organisational authority and incentives, which a diagram alone cannot supply.

4.4 Capabilities and organisational learning

Day (1994) identifies market sensing and customer linking as important capabilities of market-driven organisations. The relevance to STRELM is that recognising a need and responding to it require more than allocating a meeting slot. A team may identify Coverage as a priority but lack the skills, systems or authority needed to improve it. Diagnosis should therefore distinguish a lack of attention from a lack of capability.

Teece (2007) develops the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities through sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capacities. STRELM’s repeated diagnosis and review can be interpreted as a possible management routine supporting adaptation. That interpretation remains conditional. Changing the highlighted quadrant does not establish that resources have been reconfigured, capabilities renewed or performance improved. A study should observe the consequential changes rather than infer a dynamic capability from use of the label.

March (1991) examines the competing demands of exploration and exploitation, including differences in the timing and uncertainty of their returns. STRELM must not equate Origination with exploration or Penetration with exploitation. A new customer may buy a familiar product through a routine channel, while an established customer may collaborate on an uncertain new service. Exploration and exploitation describe a different dimension of activity. The practical implication is to record whether an intervention develops new knowledge or mainly uses existing competence, alongside its STRELM category.

This additional distinction guards against a short-horizon bias. If managers repeatedly favour whichever activity yields the fastest visible receipt, they may neglect experiments whose benefits arrive later. A commercial focus can be immediate while a separate, explicitly funded learning commitment is preserved. STRELM should reveal this choice rather than claim to solve it through a universal allocation formula.

4.5 Account organisation and customer experience

Homburg, Workman and Jensen (2002) analyse key account management through activities, actors, resources and formalisation. Their configurational perspective is relevant because the same customer activity can be organised in different ways. A Coverage priority may call for a dedicated account owner, a cross-functional team or clearer escalation, depending on the setting. The category is therefore not a staffing prescription.

Lemon and Verhoef (2016) describe customer experience across multiple touchpoints and emphasise coordination across functions and partners. This challenges a simple supplier-defined sales funnel. Customers can re-enter a conversation, change requirements or experience a failure after purchase. STRELM’s activities should therefore be connected through feedback and handoffs, rather than interpreted as four consecutive stages completed once for every customer.

Kaplan and Norton (1992; 2002) connect financial and non-financial measurement with strategy implementation through the balanced scorecard. The relevant lesson is measurement breadth. STRELM specifies a focus of action; an accompanying scorecard should test economic consequences, customer experience, process reliability and learning. It does not follow that its four activities correspond to the scorecard’s four perspectives. They answer different questions.

4.6 Comparisons with Herzberg Maslow and Porter

Herzberg’s account distinguishes factors associated with dissatisfaction from those associated with motivation (Herzberg, 1968/2003). As an analogy, this encourages managers to distinguish repairing a deficient relationship from creating a reason for additional engagement. The analogy cannot assign Coverage permanently to hygiene and Penetration permanently to motivation. Excellent Coverage may be the reason a customer chooses a provider; poorly judged expansion may create dissatisfaction. The classification must follow the customer’s situation rather than a fixed theoretical correspondence.

Maslow (1943) considers relative priority among human needs while recognising partial satisfaction and exceptions to a rigid order. For STRELM, the useful parallel is conditional dependency: some initiatives require other conditions to be sufficiently reliable. A material service failure may block a proposed extension, while a modest website imperfection may not prevent a trusted referral. These are organisational dependencies, not evidence that companies or customers follow a universal hierarchy of needs. A STRELM maturity pyramid would therefore require a separate argument and evidence.

Porter’s Five Forces addresses industry structure and the distribution of economic value among industry participants (Porter, 2008; Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, n.d.). It supplies an external diagnosis that STRELM does not contain. Strong buyer power or substitutes may explain why familiar sales interventions disappoint. STRELM can then organise a response within the business, but it cannot assume that clearer presentation or more relationship work will overcome an unattractive industry structure.

The models are complementary at different analytical levels. None validates STRELM by resemblance. The most direct theoretical connections remain CRM, relationship marketing and organisational attention. The comparisons with motivation theories are interpretive devices whose value lies in the questions they prompt, not in claiming that the same mechanisms have been demonstrated across domains.

Table 1. Comparison of analytical roles

5 Specification of the STRELM model.

5.1 Purpose and unit of analysis

STRELM is defined here as a framework for allocating and reviewing commercial attention across Presentation, Origination, Coverage and Penetration within a specified organisational unit and decision horizon. Commercial attention includes management discussion, analytical effort, sponsorship and follow-through directed towards an issue. It is distinct from expenditure or staff hours, although an effective priority will often require both. A team can spend heavily on an activity that receives little critical review, or repeatedly discuss an issue without committing resources.

The primary unit of analysis is a commercial decision episode within a defined unit: for example, a country desk’s next quarterly allocation decision. The focal object is the intervention or intervention package selected. Customer-level outcomes and company-level results are downstream observations. These levels should not be conflated. A clearer management decision can coexist with a weak financial result because of an external shock; a strong financial result can arise without a better decision.

The model assumes that managers have some discretion over commercial activity, access to at least provisional evidence and a way to review consequences. It does not assume complete information, unlimited organisational authority or independent business units. Where a unit cannot change the relevant activity, the output may be an escalation to the responsible level. Where the binding constraint lies outside the four activities, the output should identify that limit rather than force a quadrant choice.

5.2 Activity definitions and boundaries

Table 2. The STRELM framework

Table 2 formalises the STRELM categories developed by Alastair Hoyne. Definitions and measurement guidance are the 2026 extension; the activity names derive from the historical formulation. They classify the intended purpose of an intervention, not the department carrying it out.

Presentation includes more than visual appearance. It concerns the intelligibility and credibility of the promise being made. Evidence might show that intended customers misunderstand eligibility or cannot distinguish a service from alternatives. A redesign is justified only if it addresses that problem. Presentation can also reveal a substantive weakness in the offer which communication alone cannot repair.

Origination is separated from raw lead volume. A campaign that attracts many unsuitable prospects can increase workload while reducing the team’s ability to pursue appropriate opportunities. The diagnostic object is therefore a qualified relationship flow, with disqualification reasons retained. The model does not prescribe that new customers are always preferable to existing ones, nor that a growth objective is feasible simply because acquisition activity is increased.

Coverage includes ordinary service obligations, issue resolution, coordination and learning about a customer’s changing circumstances. It can sustain valuable relationships and reveal the need for repricing or an orderly exit. Increasing contact is not automatically an improvement. The relevant question is whether attention changes a material customer or operational condition, rather than merely creating more recorded interactions.

Penetration retains the terminology used in the historical model. Its intended meaning is appropriate relationship development, including relevant cross-selling and a larger share of requirements. It should not mean extracting more revenue regardless of need. A positive diagnosis requires an identifiable additional requirement, a credible offer and delivery capacity. An existing relationship does not establish suitability, consent or economic attractiveness.

5.3 Classification rules

The 2014 formulation describes Origination in terms of new client relationships, while the 2015 wording allows new business from existing or new markets. For contemporary reporting, this paper adopts a primary classification convention: opportunities involving new customer relationships are coded to Origination; relevant incremental business within an existing relationship is coded to Penetration. The unit at which a relationship is considered new, such as group, legal entity or business division, must be fixed before measurement.

A referral from an existing customer that produces a different new customer is primarily Origination, with Coverage or Penetration recorded as a contributing activity where justified. A renewal maintaining the same scope is primarily Coverage; a separately identifiable expansion can be recorded under Penetration. A revised proposal document is Presentation work even when produced by a salesperson. These conventions prevent departmental labels from determining classification and prevent the same revenue being credited in full to several activities.

Activities can still interact. A single programme may contain Presentation and Origination work, or Coverage repair followed by a suitable expansion. It should be separated into identifiable actions where possible. If it is genuinely indivisible, it should be assessed as a package with one accountable owner and several activity tags. Primary classification is a reporting convenience, not a claim that commercial mechanisms are mutually exclusive.

5.4 The original quadrant and contemporary use

Figure 1. Historical STRELM arrangement, redrawn from D2, page 5, and D3, page 2. Cost increases horizontally and Value Add vertically. Positions reproduce the historical heuristic and are not measured coordinates or a universal ranking. Model attributed to Alastair Hoyne; redrawn figure © 2026 Alastair Hoyne, subject to underlying rights.

The historical display places Penetration at upper left, Origination at upper right, Presentation at lower left and Coverage at lower right. A literal economic reading would imply stable cost and value differences among the activities. That interpretation is untenable without specifying interventions, settings, time horizons and the meaning of value. A Coverage intervention may prevent a major loss, while a new cross-selling capability may be costly and unsuccessful.

For contemporary application, the fixed positions serve as a recognisable visual key. Highlighting a corner indicates the current focus, not low cost, high return or a performance score. A separate decision record carries estimates of cost, contribution and uncertainty. If managers need an empirical cost-value chart, they should plot actual candidate interventions on a separately labelled chart with units and assumptions. Mixing a category key and an economic measurement chart would create avoidable ambiguity.

5.5 Three connected layers

The first layer is the activity diagnosis: what kind of commercial work may warrant attention? The second is the organisational view: where does this diagnosis apply, and who can act? The third is the execution process: what will change, through which handoffs, and how will the result be reviewed? These layers formalise recurring features of the archive without claiming that every historical document explicitly stated the combined architecture.

A geographical map is appropriate when countries are meaningful decision units. A segment-by-activity table is preferable when customer segments drive accountability. A business-line view can reveal differences concealed by a national average. Customer segments and activities are separate dimensions; four segment pillars must not be mistaken for the four STRELM categories. Shared accounts require a coordinating owner so that several local views do not result in contradictory customer contact.

6 Proposed mechanisms and boundary conditions.

6.1 From shared vocabulary to a defensible diagnosis

The first proposed mechanism is selective attention. A common vocabulary makes neglected activities easier to name and competing diagnoses easier to compare. A sales shortfall can be discussed as an acquisition problem, a credibility problem or a delivery-related loss rather than being accepted immediately as a need for more selling. This mechanism depends on participants examining evidence across the four activities. Merely relabelling an existing preference adds no diagnostic value.

The second mechanism is contextual alignment. A local diagnosis relates an intervention to a plausible constraint in that unit. Its potential benefit is greatest when units differ materially and managers otherwise rely on uniform directives. If all units face the same constraint, a common response may be efficient. The model therefore does not presume that local variation is always superior. It asks whether variation in action is justified by variation in evidence and conditions.

The third mechanism is coordinated commitment. A visible priority, combined with a named owner, resource commitment and handoff, can reduce ambiguity about what should happen next. The mechanism is behavioural: fewer decisions remain unowned, fewer teams pursue incompatible actions and dependencies become discussable. Without authority or capacity, however, the display becomes a record of aspirations rather than a management intervention.

6.2 Complementarity and displacement

A proposed intervention may depend on another activity functioning adequately. Origination can increase demands on Coverage; Coverage can reveal relevant opportunities for Penetration; Presentation can clarify an offer needed by either new or established customers. These are hypothesised complementarities. They do not imply that all four activities should receive equal expenditure or that a single activity is universally upstream of the others.

Resource displacement is equally important. Assigning an experienced relationship manager to new acquisition may weaken continuity for existing customers. A website project may displace work on a service failure. The unit must compare the gain expected from the new intervention with the consequences of the work it displaces. Baseline obligations remain constraints. A highlighted priority means additional emphasis within those constraints, not permission to neglect the other activities.

Some combinations may perform worse than separate interventions. Promoting a new service before operational readiness can damage trust. Intensive coverage may become intrusive or expensive. A large account expansion can increase dependency on one customer. STRELM’s analytical extension therefore permits negative interactions and declining returns. Complementarity is a proposition to assess in context, not a reason to approve every integrated programme.

6.3 Learning and the risk of fixation

A diagnosis should be recorded as a prediction about a changeable condition. Reviewing the result against that prediction can distinguish an incorrect diagnosis from weak execution or a changed environment. This is the proposed learning mechanism. Its operation requires a stable record of the original reasoning; rewriting the explanation after seeing the result defeats the purpose.

The same simplification that makes a display useful can also create fixation. A team labelled Origination may continue pursuing acquisition after the constraint has shifted to delivery. A map can conceal disagreement, and a visually prominent unit can attract attention disproportionate to its importance. Review dates, explicit uncertainty and a route for recording an issue outside the model are therefore substantive parts of the extension, not decorative additions.

6.4 Conditions limiting useful application

STRELM is most plausibly useful where recurring relationships matter, commercial activities compete for attention and managers can alter their organisation or delivery. It is less informative where there is no meaningful ongoing relationship, where the relevant constraint is a legal prohibition or physical capacity limit, or where an external shock dominates feasible commercial responses. In those cases, the framework may locate a symptom without providing an adequate solution.

The model also depends on information quality and the ability to challenge senior preferences. Inaccurate opportunity data can make a pipeline appear healthy. Commercial incentives can encourage staff to classify routine renewals as expansion. Consultants may prefer a diagnosis that justifies their own service. A credible implementation needs disconfirming evidence, transparent definitions and an accountable decision-maker able to choose an alternative, including no additional intervention.

Figure 2. Proposed STRELM decision mechanism. Context and evidence inform diagnosis; diagnosis informs a comparative decision and accountable execution; review tests the original prediction. The arrows represent proposed processes, not estimated causal effects. Analytical extension by Alastair Hoyne, 2026.

7 A protocol for management and consulting practice.

7.1 Establish the decision before selecting a quadrant

Begin by specifying the unit, its objective, the decision horizon and the resources over which it has discretion. Sustainable contribution from suitable relationships may be a useful objective, but a start-up may initially prioritise learning about demand and an established service unit may need to repair reliability. The chosen objective must be stated before candidate interventions are compared. Otherwise, the criterion can be changed to favour the preferred proposal.

Collect a proportionate baseline across all four activities. This should include the customer’s account of the problem, operational evidence and economic information, rather than sales data alone. Separate observed facts from estimates and interpretations. A low conversion rate is an observation; poor presentation is one possible explanation. Pricing, product fit, qualification, capacity or market conditions may explain the same observation.

Ask what evidence would contradict the leading diagnosis. If managers suspect a Presentation problem, test whether the intended customer understands the offer. If understanding is already high but the product lacks a needed feature, communication is unlikely to be the binding constraint. If the problem lies outside the model’s commercial categories, refer it to the relevant strategic, operational or product decision rather than expanding the categories until they explain everything.

7.2 Compare feasible interventions

Construct at least one credible alternative to the preferred intervention, alongside the option of continuing the existing approach. A Coverage priority could involve assigning account ownership, redesigning a handoff or reducing service complexity. Those actions differ in cost, timing and consequence despite sharing one category. Evaluation must therefore occur at intervention level.

Compare incremental customer contribution over a specified horizon, relevant implementation and servicing costs, scarce-resource use, dependencies and adverse consequences. Use ranges where uncertainty is material. Distinguish additional cash expenditure from capacity already paid for and from the contribution forgone by displacing other work. Avoid counting the same opportunity cost twice. Broader strategic benefits, such as learning or reduced concentration, can be recorded separately when monetary estimates would be speculative.

The decision need not maximise a single score. Some obligations and customer protections are constraints, not benefits that can be traded away for revenue. Where several feasible choices remain, the decision-maker should document why one is preferred and what evidence would change that judgement. The model supplies structure for that comparison; it does not supply universal weights or a validated optimisation function.

7.3 Connect the priority to the operating workflow

Table 3. Mapping diagnosis to the historical commercial workflow

The stage labels are documented in D1, D5 and D6. Table 3’s mapping and controls are a contemporary interpretation. The links are many-to-many, and return to an earlier stage is permitted. A lost opportunity, a deferral and a decision not to expand are legitimate outcomes, not necessarily process failures.

7.4 Make the review consequential

Each approved intervention needs an owner, a resource commitment, a predicted change, a measurement definition, a review date and a stop or adaptation condition. The review should distinguish delivery of the action from improvement in the target condition. Producing new materials does not establish better customer understanding. Recording more calls does not establish better Coverage. Revenue received does not establish that the intervention caused it.

The owner should report what happened, what differed from the prediction and what competing explanation remains plausible. A short decision record can then support continuation, adjustment, escalation or stopping. Repeated reviews should assess whether the framework improves decisions enough to justify the time it consumes. A process that produces elaborate reporting without better action can itself become a candidate for simplification.

8 Worked applications.

The following examples are constructed illustrations of the decision logic. They are not anonymised client results, retrospective estimates of historical engagements or financial forecasts for Finanze Group. Their numbers are deliberately simple so that the assumptions and arithmetic can be inspected.

8.1 An advisory team facing retention risk

Suppose an advisory team serves 20 accounts, each expected to contribute £10,000 over the next year after ordinary servicing costs. Management estimates a 20% loss probability per account under the current approach. A Coverage intervention costing £12,000 is expected to reduce that probability to 10%. Under these assumptions, expected preserved contribution is 20 × £10,000 × (0.20 − 0.10) = £20,000. Subtracting the intervention cost gives an expected incremental contribution of £8,000.

An alternative Origination campaign costs £15,000 and is expected to produce three new accounts, each contributing £8,000 within the same year after delivery costs. Its expected incremental contribution is £9,000. The higher central estimate alone does not settle the decision: the team must compare uncertainty, capacity requirements and whether existing service obligations are already being missed. Mandatory remediation cannot be rejected because a sales campaign appears more profitable.

For the discretionary Coverage intervention, the break-even reduction in loss probability is £12,000 divided by £200,000, or six percentage points. A reduction of five points yields £10,000 of preserved contribution and a £2,000 shortfall against intervention cost; fifteen points yields £30,000 and an £18,000 surplus. The decision is therefore sensitive to the retention effect. No independent losses assumption is needed to sum expected contributions, although correlation between account losses would affect aggregate risk. The figures are undiscounted one-year expectations and do not represent cash-flow timing or longer-term customer value.

This example shows why a quadrant cannot contain a universal cost-value ranking. Coverage can have substantial economic importance. It also shows why avoided loss is a counterfactual estimate: management does not observe which accounts would have left under the alternative. A later evaluation must test the assumptions rather than treat every retained account as evidence of success.

8.2 A software business with strong relationships

A software provider has stable service delivery and receives repeated requests from existing customers for an additional reporting capability. Penetration is a plausible commercial focus, but the available information may support different actions. The provider might sell an existing relevant module, collaborate on a new feature or decline because development costs exceed credible demand. Only the first is a straightforward expansion of an established offer.

Coverage supplies evidence about the unmet need. Product and technical analysis determine whether it can be served. Presentation explains the resulting proposition. Penetration describes the intended commercial outcome within existing relationships. The model coordinates the questions but cannot replace product development or investment appraisal. The eventual decision can legitimately be to gather further evidence before offering anything.

8.3 A group operating across countries

Consider three country units in the same group. Unit A has reliable delivery but customers misunderstand its specialist proposition. Unit B has strong recognition and spare capacity but an insufficient flow of suitable prospects. Unit C has an established customer base and unresolved service issues. A common instruction to increase acquisition would respond well to B’s apparent problem while potentially wasting effort in A and worsening C’s position.

A STRELM display can show Presentation for A, Origination for B and Coverage for C, each linked to evidence and a responsible owner. Headquarters must still examine shared dependencies. If the same technical team serves all three units, B’s growth may consume the capacity needed for C’s repair. Local alignment is therefore necessary but not sufficient: the group needs an aggregate resource decision. The display’s benefit would be making that conflict visible, not automatically resolving it.

8.4 A suitable decision to decline

An established professional-services customer requests an additional service beyond the provider’s competence. Penetration identifies a commercial opportunity, but analysis shows that delivery would require disproportionate investment and introduce an unacceptable risk of failure. The appropriate response may be a referral, a clearly bounded partnership or a decline. The relationship can be strengthened by an honest limit. A system that records this only as a missed sale would contradict the model’s intended decision discipline.

9 Propositions for empirical investigation.

The propositions concern the 2026 specification, not a claim that the historical quadrant has already produced these effects. Each identifies a proposed mechanism and a comparison. Positive findings would support a bounded claim about the tested configuration and setting; null or adverse findings would require revision.

P1 Contextual alignment

Where units differ materially in their commercial constraints, an evidence-led STRELM review will improve the alignment between selected interventions and independently assessed constraints relative to a uniform commercial directive. The mechanism is explicit comparison of local diagnoses using a common vocabulary. The predicted advantage should diminish when unit conditions are similar. An independent assessment must be defined before the resulting outcomes are known, otherwise favourable results can be relabelled as evidence of correct diagnosis.

P2 Decision coordination

STRELM reviews that record dependencies, owners and resource commitments will reduce unresolved handoffs and contradictory commercial actions relative to reviews that use only the four category labels. The proposed mechanism is the translation of diagnosis into an accepted commitment. A finding that the label-only condition performs equally well would weaken the claim that the full protocol adds coordination value. Conversely, an effect of the protocol would not by itself establish that the four labels are necessary.

P3 Relationship conditions and expansion

The effect of a Penetration intervention on incremental contribution and customer response will be less favourable where baseline service failures are material and unresolved. The proposed mechanism is that an additional offer competes with an unmet existing commitment. This is not a universal requirement to complete all Coverage work before expansion: a new service could address the existing failure. Studies should therefore distinguish complementary remedies from unrelated sales approaches.

P4 Visual communication

A consistent STRELM focus display will improve comprehension and recall of differences in unit priorities relative to an information-equivalent narrative report, provided users understand the legend. It may also increase misinterpretation if users read the historical quadrant positions as measured cost and value. Tests should measure both accuracy and speed, including false confidence and neglected dependencies. Faster reading with more serious errors would contradict a claim of better decision support.

P5 The short-horizon trade-off

When managers evaluate candidate actions using only near-term revenue, STRELM prioritisation will favour interventions with faster visible returns more often than a review that also records customer consequences, longer-term contribution and learning objectives. The mechanism is the evaluation criterion rather than the activity names. This proposition tests whether the expanded decision record changes choices; it does not assume that every longer-horizon intervention is preferable.

P6 Capability and authority as moderators

The association between a STRELM priority and implementation will be stronger where the accountable owner controls or can secure the required capability and resources. Where authority and capability are absent, improved diagnostic clarity will be less likely to translate into action. Measures should distinguish available resources from the decision-maker’s perception of availability. Otherwise, optimism can explain both the reported quality of the diagnosis and the reported implementation.

P7 Review and adaptation

Relative to a one-off STRELM diagnosis, a scheduled review that compares results with the original prediction will increase timely revision after material changes in evidence. The proposed mechanism is explicit error correction. More frequent change is not inherently better: researchers must examine whether revisions respond to new information rather than ordinary noise or managerial impatience. Persistence with a well-supported intervention can be an appropriate outcome.

P8 Economic and customer outcomes

Across comparable units, the complete STRELM protocol will improve incremental contribution without deterioration in predefined customer and service outcomes relative to an equally resourced generic prioritisation process, if its diagnostic structure adds value beyond ordinary planning discipline. This is the most demanding proposition. It requires a credible counterfactual and adequate follow-up. Failure to outperform the generic process would limit claims of distinctive economic value even if users find the model clear and useful.

10 A programme for evaluating the model.

10.1 Establish construct clarity first

The initial study should examine whether managers, customer-facing staff and independent researchers interpret the categories consistently. Participants would classify a balanced set of commercial decision vignettes, including ambiguous cases, packages and problems outside the model. Record the primary activity, contributing activities, confidence and rationale. Agreement statistics should be accompanied by a confusion table showing which distinctions fail. High agreement obtained by excluding difficult cases would provide weak evidence of practical usefulness.

The study should separately assess whether participants distinguish diagnosis from intervention, priority from performance and attention from expenditure. Candidate items in Appendix B are development prompts, not a validated psychometric scale. Several elements describe components of a process rather than interchangeable manifestations of a latent trait. They should not be combined into a single reliable-looking score merely because a statistical package permits it.

10.2 Test the display independently of the protocol

A randomised vignette study can compare a narrative report with an information-equivalent STRELM display. Both groups should receive the same facts, numerical information, time allowance and decision question. Outcomes include correct identification of priorities, recognition of resource conflicts, recall and unjustified inferences about cost or value. An additional condition using an ordinary structured table can test whether any gain comes from information organisation rather than the particular quadrant.

The analytical plan should be specified before collecting outcomes. Researchers should determine sample size from a substantively meaningful effect, anticipated variability and the experimental design; this paper does not prescribe an arbitrary participant count. Report uncertainty intervals and adverse effects as well as average differences. Blinding outcome assessors to condition, where feasible, reduces the risk of interpreting a familiar model more generously.

10.3 Evaluate implementation in the field

A field pilot should first establish feasibility: whether teams can obtain the necessary evidence, conduct reviews consistently and record actions without disproportionate burden. Implementation fidelity needs observable criteria, such as a defined unit, alternative considered, customer evidence, owner acceptance and completed review. Attendance at a workshop is not evidence that the routine was used. Pilot findings should inform the design of an outcome study rather than being presented as proof of effectiveness.

For outcome evaluation, cluster randomisation across suitably independent units would be preferable where feasible. A phased rollout may be operationally practical, but timing should be randomised if a causal comparison is intended and spillovers should be assessed. Shared customers, managers and resources can contaminate comparisons. A small business with one interdependent team may support a rich longitudinal case study but not a persuasive controlled estimate from several nominally separate desks.

Where randomisation is unavailable, a comparison design should examine baseline trends, case mix, seasonality, staffing changes and market conditions. Difference-in-differences analysis requires a defensible parallel-trends assumption and attention to treatment timing (Callaway and Sant’Anna, 2021); a before-and-after improvement alone is insufficient. The study should use a method appropriate to the actual data rather than promising causal identification in advance. Sensitivity analyses and negative cases should be planned alongside the main comparison.

Primary economic outcomes should be defined consistently with the business model and accounting period. Customer outcomes might include unresolved complaints, service failures or independent feedback. Process outcomes include accepted handoffs, decision completion and changes in resource allocation. Separate new acquisition, retained business and expansion to prevent double counting. Report the costs of training, review meetings, data preparation and management time so that any benefit is assessed net of implementation burden.

10.4 Reconstruct historical applications carefully

The existing archive could support a separate comparative case study if supplemented by approved plans, contemporaneous correspondence, implementation records and interviews with other participants. Eisenhardt (1989) describes a structured approach to building theory from cases. A STRELM study should use contrasting cases, including partial implementation, failure and abandonment, rather than selecting only engagements remembered as successful.

For each case, construct a dated sequence from initial diagnosis through decision, action and outcome. Distinguish evidence produced at the time from later recollection. Seek competing explanations such as a new product, a market recovery or a change in leadership. Repeated slides from one consultancy practice demonstrate diffusion or reuse; they do not provide independent causal replications. Confidentiality arrangements may permit corroboration without public disclosure of sensitive client information.

10.5 Distinguish framework effects from practitioner effects

An experienced consultant may improve outcomes through judgement, relationships or authority independently of the model. Evaluation should therefore compare the full protocol with a credible alternative delivered with similar time, expertise and sponsorship. It should also examine whether managers can use STRELM without the model’s originator. A routine that works only through one individual’s tacit knowledge has a different claim to transferability from a framework that can be taught and applied consistently.

Independent researchers should be able to report null findings, implementation difficulties and adverse outcomes. Prospective registration of questions, outcomes and analysis decisions would improve transparency. The author’s commercial interests and involvement in design or delivery should be disclosed. No study described in this section has yet been conducted as part of this paper.

11 Implications for management consulting and model development.

11.1 What managers gain from the framework

The immediate practical value of STRELM is a structured conversation about commercial priorities. It can help a leadership team recognise that a revenue problem has several possible causes and that different units may require different responses. The discipline of naming an alternative, preserving baseline obligations and agreeing a review date makes the resulting decision more inspectable. That value should be assessed through actual use rather than assumed from the apparent simplicity of the diagram.

For consultants, the framework can support an initial diagnostic workshop and a common language for engagement with sales, marketing, account management and operations. It should not predetermine the recommended service. A consultant specialising in marketing must be able to conclude that the binding problem is delivery; a relationship-development specialist must be able to recommend product redesign or withdrawal. The framework earns credibility when it can challenge the commercial interests of the person using it.

At group level, the model can distinguish standardisation of language from standardisation of action. Units can use the same definitions while making different evidence-based choices. Leadership retains responsibility for shared resources, strategic coherence and conflicts among local priorities. A map becomes useful when it supports those decisions and remains connected to the underlying record. It becomes misleading when treated as a complete representation of the business.

11.2 What the theoretical extension adds

The 2026 extension proposes that the effect of the model depends on a configuration of components: category clarity, local evidence, comparative choice, ownership and feedback. This shifts the object of evaluation from the diagram alone to a specified management routine. It also creates an empirical obligation to identify which components matter. If a generic decision record performs as well, the model’s contribution may lie principally in teaching and communication.

The paper also separates priority from maturity. A successful, established business can reasonably prioritise Presentation after entering a new market; a young business can need Coverage immediately after its first major contract. There is no necessary progression through the four categories and no terminal quadrant representing excellence. Priorities are conditional decisions within an evolving context. This avoids turning a useful diagnostic vocabulary into a universal development sequence.

Finally, the extension treats customer consequences and commercial economics as part of the same decision. Appropriate growth depends on the capacity to deliver a relevant promise. An outcome that increases sales while causing predictable customer harm or an unmanageable service burden is not an unqualified success. A decision to defer or decline can demonstrate sound application of the framework.

11.3 From STRELM to The Finanze Framework

STRELM remains an organising influence in my work at Finanze Group. I recognise its activities in how the businesses explain their proposition, establish relationships, maintain service and identify relevant additional needs. This is an account of practitioner use, not a quantified attribution of group performance to the model. A future implementation study could examine explicit adoption and record the difference between intuitive use and the structured protocol proposed here.

The Finanze Framework emerged later from my education, entrepreneurial activity and direct experience in property investment finance. It examines how Strategy, Property and Finance interact in an investment decision (Hoyne, 2026). The continuity lies in a concern with the connections that fragmented business functions can conceal. The decision objects differ: STRELM considers commercial attention across relationships and units; TFF considers whether the structure and execution of an investment are coherent.

The models can therefore operate at different points in one process. STRELM may identify a client’s additional requirement as deserving attention. TFF may then show that the proposed transaction should be redesigned, deferred or declined. Commercial interest in developing a relationship cannot establish investment viability. The relationship model should generate an appropriate question, while the investment model and relevant specialist analysis determine whether a specific opportunity can responsibly proceed.

12 Limitations.

The principal limitation is the absence of direct empirical evaluation of STRELM. The paper supplies a documentary history, conceptual reasoning and a programme for testing. None should be represented as estimated effect sizes or confirmed causal mechanisms. Practitioner experience can identify useful problems and generate hypotheses, but it is vulnerable to selective memory, hindsight and attribution bias.

A second limitation concerns coverage of the commercial system. Four activities omit or compress product innovation, pricing, channel conflict, employee capability, supplier dependence and withdrawal. Some can be considered through dependencies or escalation, but unlimited expansion of the definitions would make the framework unfalsifiable. The out-of-scope option is therefore important. A useful model must permit the conclusion that a different analytical tool is needed.

A third limitation concerns classification and measurement. Origination and Penetration overlap without a stable definition of the customer relationship. Coverage can include both essential obligations and discretionary development. Attention is difficult to observe directly, while time records, meeting agendas and expenditure each capture only part of it. Customer outcomes and contribution may become visible over different periods. Research must retain these distinctions rather than compressing them into a convenient total score.

A fourth limitation is transferability. The archive is concentrated in the originator’s professional settings and is not representative of all industries. Relationship-intensive business services provide plausible initial settings for research; use in retail, public services, supplier networks or highly automated markets would need adapted definitions and separate evaluation. A model can be portable without being universal.

Finally, historical attribution, public dissemination and legal ownership are distinct matters. The archive supports an account of Hoyne’s named formulation and development. It does not settle all rights in employer, client or collaborative documents, nor establish exclusivity over familiar management ideas. This paper uses newly written explanations and figures while keeping sensitive historical material private.

13 Conclusion.

STRELM addresses a recurring management decision: where should a defined part of the business focus its next increment of commercial attention, and why? The historical model provides four activities and a compact way to communicate local priorities. The present paper develops that foundation into a framework connecting diagnosis, organisational context, comparative resource choice and accountable execution.

Its central theoretical claim is conditional. A shared vocabulary may improve decisions when it helps managers examine evidence, recognise dependencies and commit to a reviewable course of action. The same vocabulary can mislead if it substitutes for diagnosis, conceals uncertainty or encourages a fixed economic ranking. The contribution is therefore an explicit and testable management framework, grounded in a documented practitioner history and positioned within established research. Its eventual standing should depend on explanatory clarity, practical usefulness and independent evidence of its consequences.

Author statement and disclosures.

Alastair Hoyne is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Finanze Group and author of The Finanze Framework: Property Strategy & Finance Success. This paper formalises and extends his practitioner-developed STRELM model. It is a conceptual academic working paper and has not undergone independent peer review. No university affiliation, institutional endorsement or empirical validation is implied.

The author has commercial interests in the application of the frameworks discussed. Responsibility for the final approved argument, source use and published versions rests with Alastair Hoyne.

Data availability: the historical corpus contains confidential business materials and is not publicly reproduced. The private evidence register identifies the copies examined and the relevant locations. Any access for independent research would require appropriate rights and confidentiality arrangements. The illustrative numerical example contains no client data.

© 2026 Alastair Hoyne. Original text and newly drawn figures, subject to underlying and third-party rights. The author asserts the right to be identified as author. This notice does not claim exclusive rights over generic commercial activities or methods.

Suggested citation: Hoyne, A. (2026). STRELM and the allocation of commercial attention: A practitioner developed framework for strategic relationship management. Conceptual academic working paper, version 2.0, 7 October. Alastair Hoyne.

Appendix A A STRELM decision record.

The following record is an application aid proposed in this paper. It can be completed as a short narrative or incorporated into a management system. It should remain proportionate to the importance of the decision.

Table 4. Fields for a reviewable commercial decision

A completed record should make the trade-off intelligible to someone who did not attend the meeting. For example: the unit will repair named account ownership because unresolved handoffs are the best-supported cause of service delay; it will retain its existing acquisition baseline; and it will reassess the diagnosis after measuring resolution and repeat issues. This is more informative than recording Coverage as a priority without explaining what will change.

Appendix B Measurement and research instruments.

Table 5. Candidate measures and interpretation risks

Interview prompts should ask participants to explain a recent allocation decision in their own words before introducing the model’s terminology. Ask what evidence they used, which alternative they rejected, whose work was displaced and what would make them change their mind. Then examine whether the STRELM categories reveal anything previously omitted. This order reduces the risk that participants simply repeat the framework they have just been taught.

For observation of review meetings, record who introduces each diagnosis, who supplies contradictory evidence, whether customer information is represented and whether the final owner accepts responsibility. Retain disagreement rather than turning every meeting into an artificial consensus. Compare the recorded priority with subsequent resource allocation and action. These observations can identify a gap between the declared process and the routine actually used.

For economic analysis, define contribution consistently and disclose which costs are included. Use an appropriate horizon for the service and distinguish billed revenue from collected cash where that matters. Share of wallet requires a credible estimate of the customer’s relevant total spend; where that denominator is unavailable, report the observed expansion directly. Do not invent a precise share estimate to complete a dashboard.

Appendix C Literature and archive traceability.

C1 Scope of the literature review

Searches were conducted on the open web using scholarly titles, author names and conceptual terms. Publisher pages and university or author-associated repositories were prioritised. This approach supports an integrative conceptual paper but is less exhaustive than a documented search across subscription bibliographic databases. It cannot establish that no earlier comparable model exists. Search visibility and the absence of an exact acronym match are not evidence of scholarly priority.

The access basis varied by source. Jaakkola (2020), March (1991) and Maslow (1943) were available as full-text sources; the Brielmaier and Friesl (2023) review was consulted through its full-text publisher page. Ocasio (1997) was located as a university-hosted original and publisher record; its principal argument was checked against the accessible record and subsequent original work by Ocasio and colleagues. Accessible abstracts or research records supported the narrowly stated accounts of Payne and Frow, Morgan and Hunt, Reinartz and colleagues, Day, Homburg and colleagues, Lemon and Verhoef, and Teece. Methodological records and accessible original sources were used for Whetten and Eisenhardt. Callaway and Sant’Anna’s publisher abstract was used to qualify the proposed non-randomised evaluation design.

Herzberg’s comparison uses the publisher’s description of the 2003 reprint, with its bibliographic details checked against the publication record. Porter’s framework was checked through the Harvard Business School Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, and balanced-scorecard principles through Kaplan and Norton’s own discussion hosted by Harvard Business School. Palmatier and colleagues’ findings were checked against the American Marketing Association’s author-attributed summary and article abstract. These access distinctions limit the depth of claims made about each source; no inaccessible full text is represented as having been reviewed in full.

C2 Public archive register

Table 6. Historical sources used in this paper

The earlier private assessment retains the source names, copy identifiers and detailed limitations. Public descriptions intentionally omit commercially sensitive proposals, client lists, terms and internal assessments. This paper does not infer permission to reproduce original corporate slides from possession of a copy.

Related reading.

The model in brief.

The Finanze Framework^™ is Alastair Hoyne’s approach to assessing whether an investment works as a connected transaction. It brings together Strategy, Property and Finance, with protection and continuity considered throughout, rather than relying on a headline discount, yield or borrowing percentage.

Download the full working paper (PDF)

Key questions.

What does The Finanze Framework assess?

Its eight connected tests examine investor fit, asset evidence, value creation, ownership, liquidity, execution, exit and protection. The question is whether the particular investor can achieve the intended outcome through the proposed transaction.

Can The Finanze Framework apply beyond property?

The paper proposes that its decision questions can transfer to investments such as business acquisitions and equipment purchases. The evidence and specialist analysis must change with the asset; usefulness beyond property has not been independently validated.

How does TFF relate to Deal Analysis?

TFF supplies the organising principles for Deal Analysis under Strategy, Property and Finance. It connects each material finding to evidence, implications and next actions. A desktop analysis remains distinct from a valuation, survey, legal opinion or funding offer.

Read the full paper.

Strategic coherence from property selection to finance and exit

Conceptual working paper • Version 1.1 • 7 October 2026

Abstract.

An attractive asset is not necessarily an executable investment. An investor may identify a price discount or a credible improvement opportunity yet lack the ownership rights, liquidity, delivery capability or repayment route needed to realise it. This paper formalises The Finanze Framework^™ as a practitioner-developed model for assessing those relationships. It brings together three established analytical lenses, Strategy, Property and Finance, through eight connected decision tests, with protection and continuity considered throughout. The model is situated alongside STRELM^™, the author’s earlier Strategic Relationship Management Model, and examined against literature on bounded rationality, strategic complementarity, investment under uncertainty and customer relationship management. Comparisons with Herzberg, Maslow and Porter clarify the models’ purposes and limits. A hypothetical transaction demonstrates the distinction between asset uplift, realised profit, liquidity and capital retained after refinancing. The paper proposes testable relationships and a research design for evaluating decision quality. Its contribution is an explicit, attributable synthesis and a practical decision architecture. It does not report empirical validation or establish superior investment returns. Transfer beyond property is proposed where investment involves identifiable assets, financing constraints, execution dependencies and an outcome that can be assessed.

Keywords: The Finanze Framework; STRELM; investment appraisal; strategic fit; property finance; liquidity; decision quality.

1 The investment problem.

Property decisions are often presented through an appealing single measure: a discount to market value, an estimated yield, a projected development margin or a borrowing percentage. Each may be relevant. None establishes that a particular investor can acquire the asset, implement the plan, meet obligations during ownership and achieve the intended outcome. The decision is about a connected transaction whose elements can support or undermine one another.

A legal change may create a more saleable asset but require expenditure before the lender releases the next advance. An attractive rental yield may depend on full occupation and omit substantial capital expenditure. A refinancing exit may support repayment of acquisition debt while leaving considerably more investor capital committed than expected. These are failures of alignment as well as failures of calculation.

The Finanze Framework, or TFF, addresses that alignment. Its proposed organising question is: can this investor realise the intended outcome from this asset, through this ownership, financing and delivery structure, within an acceptable exposure? The unit of analysis is therefore the investor–transaction combination. The same property can represent a workable investment for one owner and an unsuitable commitment for another.

This paper asks three questions. What are the essential relationships in TFF? How does its contribution relate to existing management and investment literature? Under what conditions might its logic transfer beyond property? A further purpose is to distinguish TFF from STRELM, another model developed by the author, while explaining the continuity between them.

2 Origins and the status of the evidence.

My approach developed through Management and Strategy studies at Aston University, a varied career in banking and investment management, consultancy and entrepreneurship, and five years of direct experience building Finanze. Across those settings, I repeatedly encountered decisions divided between teams or products even when the client or investor experienced them as one problem.

Before TFF, I developed STRELM, the Strategic Relationship Management Model. It organised commercial attention around Presentation, Origination, Coverage and Penetration. I used it to consider where a team, desk, business line or country operation should concentrate effort. Highlighting the relevant corner of a four-part symbol on a map made different local priorities visible without requiring every unit to follow the same commercial agenda.

In my account of its development, the model drew on initiatives I developed or led at Société Générale and Standard Chartered and was subsequently applied through consultancy and entrepreneurial work involving Trans Global Partners, KIMA and Hawk. STRELM was also the intended subject of a thesis during MBA studies that I did not complete. These experiences provide the professional provenance for the model; the historical implementations have not been independently evaluated.

The expanded companion STRELM paper reviews an author-held documentary archive. It identifies a complete four-part formulation in a regional strategy dated June 2014 and explicit STRELM naming and attribution in a strategy plan dated April 2015. These documents support the account of the model’s development, subject to the provenance and evidential limits set out in that paper; they do not establish independently measured effects on business performance (Hoyne, 2026c).

TFF develops the same habit of examining connected decisions in a different domain. The book describes a progression from the investor and property through ownership, funding, execution and exit, followed by the protection of what has been built (Hoyne, 2026a, Introduction). The existing Deal Analysis template organises practical assessment under Strategy, Property and Finance (Hoyne, 2026b). The eight-test table in this paper is a new formalisation of that material, not a claim that this exact table appeared in the earlier slide or book.

3 Method and intended contribution.

This is a conceptual working paper using a purposive literature review and model development. Jaakkola (2020) argues that conceptual research should explain the selection and function of its theoretical material. Here, sources were selected for their relevance to decision constraints, relationships between activities, investment timing and relationship management. Herzberg, Maslow and Porter provide comparisons with prominent management frameworks, with explicit attention to differences in their units of analysis.

The research draws on the final pre-publication TFF manuscript, the Deal Analysis template, the historical STRELM material and its documentary review, the author’s account and selected academic sources. Publicly accessible original texts, publisher abstracts and university research summaries were reviewed through 7 October 2026. The review is interpretive and selective, not a systematic review or an exhaustive novelty search. Detailed claims are confined to the material accessible for inspection.

Three evidential categories remain separate. The book, template and slide establish what the supplied models contain. Academic literature establishes relevant concepts and prior approaches. The decision tests, proposed mechanisms and transfer examples below are conceptual synthesis. Neither professional experience nor a resemblance to an established theory proves predictive validity.

The contribution claimed is the named arrangement of familiar concerns into a traceable decision process. No claim is made to inventing due diligence, relationship marketing, exit planning, cashflow analysis or the generic strategies described. The question for subsequent research is whether TFF makes consequential dependencies easier to identify and act upon than existing practice or an equally detailed conventional checklist.

4 Academic foundations.

Bounded rationality and selective attention

Simon (1955) challenged models of decision-making that assume extensive knowledge and computational capacity. This provides a reason to consider structured decision aids. TFF proposes that a concise set of linked questions can help direct limited attention towards material dependencies. STRELM applies a comparable organising discipline to commercial activity. Neither model removes uncertainty or substitutes for judgement.

Strategic fit and complementarity

Milgrom and Roberts (1995) analyse systems in which the effects of organisational choices depend on other choices. This is a closer theoretical connection than a resemblance between diagrams. In the proposed TFF interpretation, an improved asset, suitable legal rights, available funding and a viable exit may be valuable in combination. The paper does not establish that every component is mathematically complementary: an additional safeguard can also cost more than it contributes.

For example, separately saleable units may support a different exit from a single block. That possibility changes the required legal work, the delivery timetable, the acceptable purchase price and the finance needed in the intervening period. Assessing each item positively in isolation would miss the risk that their timetables are incompatible. TFF makes the links themselves a subject of review.

Investment timing and financing constraints

Dixit and Pindyck (1994) connect uncertainty, irreversibility and the option to wait. Their work provides a foundation for treating deferral as a substantive investment choice. Myers (1977) examines the interaction between borrowing and investment opportunities, including incentives that can discourage valuable future investment. Together, these perspectives support considering financing and timing within appraisal rather than after an asset has been selected.

The practical inference proposed here is that a decision record should compare action, redesign and waiting, while identifying the resources needed to preserve each option. Calling a sale a fallback is insufficient if the investor cannot fund the period before completion. Nor is more information always worth obtaining: a delayed decision can lose an opportunity or incur further costs. The appropriate depth of analysis depends on exposure, reversibility and the value of resolving the uncertainty.

Portfolio context and relationship management

Markowitz (1952) places portfolio selection in a risk and return framework. TFF operates at a different level: it can examine a transaction’s mechanics but cannot replace analysis of the whole portfolio. Several individually acceptable projects may share a lender, contractor, tenant sector or refinancing date. Their joint liquidity demands can make the combined commitment unacceptable.

For STRELM, a particularly relevant comparison is Payne and Frow’s (2005) cross-functional conception of customer relationship management. Morgan and Hunt (1994) place commitment and trust at the centre of relationship marketing. These sources support examining relationships across organisational boundaries. STRELM’s proposed contribution is the simpler allocation question of which commercial activity deserves attention in a particular unit. It does not originate the wider field of strategic relationship management.

5 The formalised Finanze Framework.

The three lenses retain their existing meaning. Strategy concerns the investor’s purpose, resources, choices and exposure. Property concerns the asset or legal interest, its market and the mechanism through which value may be created or preserved. Finance concerns usable capital, obligations, cash timing and the eventual recovery or continued commitment of investor funds. Beyond property, the second lens becomes Asset, while the TFF name and core logic remain unchanged.

Protection and continuity apply across all three lenses. They include ownership and decision rights, personal exposure, appropriate insurance, key-person dependencies and arrangements for the people who will ultimately benefit. Treating these matters only as a final step would conceal risks that originate at acquisition.

The eight tests below are analytical questions rather than a mandatory linear sequence. An initial objective guides the investigation, but later findings may require the strategy to change. Every material change should be traced to the other tests it affects.

Table 1 The Finanze Framework decision table

Source and credit: Alastair Hoyne, The Finanze Framework, 2026 formalisation. © 2026 Alastair Hoyne. The table synthesises the author’s book and Deal Analysis approach; it is not an empirically validated scoring instrument.

The table becomes a model when it specifies relationships. Investor constraints limit acceptable structures. Structure determines what can legally be delivered. Delivery determines when an asset becomes marketable or financeable. Funding conditions determine whether the investor can reach that point. The anticipated exit feeds back into today’s maximum commitment. Protection determines how a disruption affects the investor and others. Reviewing these connections gives the framework explanatory content beyond a list of topics.

Consider a proposed lease extension. The completed interest may have a stronger market than the interest purchased. That does not mean a lender will recognise the future value immediately, advance the premium before the legal conditions are met or accept the planned repayment assumptions. A credible assessment must establish the sequence of rights, payments and funding availability. The opportunity exists only within a workable sequence.

6 Decision discipline and Deal Analysis.

The proposed application uses two separate judgements for each material test: commercial acceptability and evidence confidence. A well-supported finding may reveal unacceptable risk. An attractive projection may rest on weak evidence. Combining both into a single score would obscure that distinction.

Commercial conclusions should be stated as acceptable within defined conditions, requiring redesign, or unacceptable. Evidence should be described as verified, supported but conditional, or unresolved, with the source and date recorded. These are proposed reporting conventions, not calibrated probabilities. A material unknown remains an unknown; it is neither a zero cost nor a satisfactory result.

Some conditions cannot sensibly be offset by strength elsewhere. An indispensable permission, an unresolved legal prohibition or a funding gap with no credible remedy cannot be averaged away by a high projected return. This is the proposed non-compensatory principle. Its application must remain specific: not every missing document should prevent preliminary exploration, and not every risk requires elimination. The decision stage and the consequence of being wrong determine the threshold.

TFF: Deal Analysis can operationalise the framework without changing its Strategy / Property / Finance structure. The Strategy section explains investor fit, alternative routes and delivery capability. The Property section tests the asset and market evidence. The Finance section reconciles full costs, usable funding, cash timing and exit. Ownership, protection and evidence gaps appear wherever they affect those conclusions. The final decision follows from the combined findings.

Each decisive finding should connect a principle, evidence, implication and next action. For example, if a works advance follows an inspection but the contractor requires payment earlier, the report should identify the timing gap, quantify the bridging cash and assign responsibility for resolving it. Merely displaying the gross facility beside the works budget would be insufficient.

The decision options are proceed to the next diligence stage, renegotiate or redesign, defer, and decline. Proceeding to further investigation is distinct from committing capital. A desktop Deal Analysis is also distinct from a formal valuation, survey, legal opinion or funding offer. Its contribution is to organise the decision and the evidence required from the appropriate specialists.

7 A hypothetical property application.

Assume an investor considers a property costing £1,000,000. Acquisition and professional costs are £100,000, works £200,000 and total finance and holding costs £100,000. The expected completed sale value is £1,600,000 and disposal costs are 2% of the actual sale price. All figures are invented for explanation, stated before tax on profit, and are not current lending terms or forecasts. Cost allowances include any irrecoverable tax assumed in the example.

The investor receives £650,000 of usable acquisition debt. For simplicity, this also equals the loan principal, which remains £650,000 until repayment. All interest and fees are paid from investor cash and included in the finance and holding allowance; there is no retained interest, further drawdown, accrued balance or exit charge outside that allowance. No operating income is assumed. These simplifications isolate the framework’s distinctions.

Table 2 From apparent uplift to cash outcome

Author’s hypothetical calculations. The downside combines a 10% lower sale value, 20% higher works cost and £30,000 additional finance and holding costs. No probability is assigned to either scenario.

The £600,000 difference between purchase price and completed value is not profit. After the stated costs, the base-case profit is £168,000. Before sale, the investor contributes £350,000 towards the purchase and a further £400,000 to the stated acquisition, works, finance and holding costs. Cash invested therefore reaches £750,000. If the investor also keeps £100,000 available as an unspent reserve, total required capital availability is £850,000. The reserve is not an expense unless used.

The downside reveals both an economic loss and an additional cash requirement. Capital of £820,000 is deployed before sale, £70,000 more than in the base case. That might be funded from the original reserve, leaving only £30,000 of it unspent. Treating lower value, increased works and delay separately could understate their combined effect. Even this scenario is illustrative rather than an exhaustive stress test.

Now consider refinancing instead of selling under the base assumptions. At an assumed 65% loan-to-value against £1,600,000, a new loan would be £1,040,000. After repaying £650,000 and paying £20,000 of additional refinancing costs, cash released would be £370,000. Of the £750,000 already invested, £380,000 would remain unrecovered in the property. No disposal charge is incurred in this refinance calculation. The investor’s unspent reserve remains separate.

Refinancing releases borrowed money; it does not realise a sale profit. The assumed loan-to-value is not evidence that the new mortgage is obtainable. Income, lender criteria, valuation basis, condition and legal acceptability would also need assessment. A hold strategy additionally requires continuing operating cashflows and future capital expenditure to be modelled.

Under TFF, the purpose test determines whether retaining £380,000 is compatible with the investor’s next commitments. The asset test challenges the £1,600,000 value. The finance test establishes the cash available during works. The execution test examines delay. The exit test distinguishes selling from refinancing. Protection establishes the consequences if the investor cannot meet obligations. The framework changes the questions before it changes the calculation.

8 Comparisons with Herzberg Maslow and Porter.

Herzberg’s distinction between factors associated with dissatisfaction and those associated with positive motivation suggests a useful analogy: removing a defect is different from establishing a positive investment case (Herzberg, 1968/2003). A legally workable structure and sufficient liquidity may be essential without creating attractive returns. That application is this paper’s interpretation; employee motivation theory is not evidence that investment risks obey a two-factor law. The wider theory has also been subject to critical review (House and Wigdor, 1967).

Maslow (1943) offers a parallel through the priority of foundational needs, but his original account recognises exceptions and partial satisfaction. Subsequent review questioned the evidence for the hierarchy (Wahba and Bridwell, 1976). TFF should therefore not be presented as a universal pyramid in which every investor moves through fixed stages. Its dependencies are contractual, financial and practical. A debt payment date imposes a different kind of constraint from a psychological need.

Porter’s Five Forces addresses industry structure and the distribution of economic value among competing participants (Porter, 2008; Harvard Business School, n.d.). It can inform an assessment of tenants, customers, competing supply or a business being acquired. TFF addresses whether a particular investor can execute a particular commitment. A favourable industry structure does not establish that the investor has the cash or rights to implement a plan.

Table 3 Relationships to established models

Comparative interpretation by Alastair Hoyne. These models address different questions; inclusion implies neither endorsement nor equivalent empirical standing.

9 Application beyond property.

The proposed generalisation preserves the decision relationships while changing the evidence. For a business acquisition, Property becomes the business and the rights acquired. For equipment investment, it becomes the asset’s productive capability. For a minority investment, governance rights and the limited control available to the investor become especially important. The model must not assume that every investor can improve or sell the underlying asset directly.

Table 4 Illustrative transfer to other investments

Proposed extensions, not tested applications or recommendations.

The strongest claim is that the framework offers portable questions for many investment decisions. The stronger assertion that it demonstrably improves most investments is not established. Its expected usefulness is greatest where financing, legal sequence and delivery materially interact. Its additional value may be smaller for simple, liquid and unleveraged decisions already governed by a robust process.

10 Propositions and a research programme.

The central proposed mechanism is earlier detection of incompatibilities. Making dependencies explicit should expose assumptions that remain hidden when analysis is divided by function. The intervening effect would be better changes to price, structure, timing or the decision to proceed. Improved financial outcomes are a more distant possibility, affected by markets and execution as well as decision quality.

P1 Dependency detection. Given the same source information, TFF-supported reviewers will identify more independently adjudicated material inconsistencies than reviewers using an equally detailed but unlinked checklist. Measure both useful detections and false alarms; more comments alone would not demonstrate improvement.

P2 Liquidity realism. Explicit reconciliation of dated payments, drawdowns and repayment will reduce errors in forecast peak cash requirements relative to a comparison process without that reconciliation. Any effect must be separated from the benefit of simply spending more analytical time.

P3 Conditional transfer. The model’s additional usefulness will be greater for transactions with more consequential legal, financing and execution dependencies. The number and importance of those dependencies should be coded before outcomes are known, not inferred after a deal fails.

P4 Decision calibration. Separating evidence confidence from commercial attractiveness will produce better-calibrated judgements and more appropriately targeted diligence. A higher rejection rate alone is not success: unnecessary rejection and missed opportunity must also be measured.

An initial study could randomly allocate suitably experienced reviewers to the two assessment formats using anonymised historical case files frozen at their original decision dates. A blinded expert panel could establish the benchmark issues. The design should control information access and review time, record inter-rater agreement and pre-specify the primary outcomes. Cases should include completed, abandoned and declined transactions to reduce survivorship bias.

A subsequent prospective study could compare forecasts with actual cash requirements, timing, scope changes and net outcomes. It would need a comparison group and controls for transaction complexity, investor capability and market conditions. Sample size should follow a power analysis. Independent researchers should oversee evaluation, given the author’s commercial interest in TFF: Deal Analysis.

11 Limitations and conclusion.

TFF is a practitioner-developed conceptual framework. Its clarity, completeness and practical plausibility can be assessed now; superior decision performance requires testing. Its source material is concentrated in the author’s work, and the historical implementation accounts are not independently audited case studies. Formalisation may also introduce retrospective coherence that was less explicit in earlier practice.

A framework can increase confidence without increasing accuracy. It can become bureaucratic, encourage box-ticking or exclude unusual opportunities if conditions are applied mechanically. Analysts may share the same mistaken assumptions, and professional reports may remain incomplete. These are reasons to preserve contrary evidence, record what would change the conclusion and compare the framework with credible alternatives.

The proposed contribution is a disciplined connection between the investor’s objective and the mechanics required to achieve it. STRELM makes commercial attention explicit across relationships; TFF makes investment dependencies explicit across strategy, asset, structure, finance and outcome. Neither promises certainty. Their value should be judged by whether they help people make better-supported decisions and recognise when an apparently attractive course of action does not work.

Author and disclosure.

Alastair Hoyne is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Finanze Group and author of The Finanze Framework: Property Strategy & Finance Success. He developed the practitioner models discussed here and has a commercial interest in services applying TFF. This working paper has not undergone independent peer review and presents no original empirical dataset. Responsibility for the released version rests with Alastair Hoyne. Academic references do not imply endorsement by the cited authors or institutions.

© 2026 Alastair Hoyne. Original text and framework presentation, subject to third-party rights and applicable law. The author asserts the right to be identified as author. No exclusive ownership of generic investment ideas or cited theories is claimed. General educational analysis; not a personalised recommendation or funding offer.

Suggested citation: Hoyne, A. (2026). The Finanze Framework as an investment decision model: Strategic coherence from property selection to finance and exit. Conceptual working paper, version 1.1, 7 October. Alastair Hoyne.

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